Chapter Six: Mortal Fears
It is only as the little death gathers in the pit of my loins that I realise that what I am doing is wrong. Never mind that Narcissa led me there, helped me clear back the remains of the meal uneaten and lay back on the polished mahogany. She gazes up at me with such sorrow, such raw need. I cease to thrust, feeling my cock begin to shrink within her, ease my grip on her wrists. Her eyes spill more tears from their corners, her jaw tenses against the sounds she keeps within. I withdraw and help her to sit up, and tuck my quivering self away. She is shaking and she doesn't take her eyes off me. I put my arms around her and draw her to my chest. I feel sick from the potion – one of my own brewing, I think – but the scent of her hair is soothing.
"I thought you would hate me," she murmurs into the folds of my robes.
I say nothing. It is also a surprise to me that I do not, that actually I appreciate her courage, her stupid misplaced tenacity. I still can't imagine the damage she's done. I don't know how real a threat Draco's epiphany will be. I don't know if I will have to kill them both, yet. Nor do I know if I will be capable of it even if I must.
She has changed me.
Dumbledore could not see how his death at my hands would affect me. He knew I was strong enough to do it at his bidding, but not how the fall-out would lead me into realms that were more dangerous for me. No man can be completely alone, left to carry as impossible a load as this. I feared this, and I told him so, and he refused to believe that I was not that strong.
I feel angry with him, suddenly. It is an uncomfortable emotion now, it never used to bother me to feel angry with him. I hold Narcissa a little closer and inhale her scent again. It shocks me how just to hold her close makes me feel invincible and vulnerable at the same time.
"I had no idea about Lily," she says. "Was the love reciprocated?"
She says it without the slightest hint of irony, and it makes my head spin a little to imagine that she believes that Lily could have loved me back. Carefully, I reply, "Lily thought I was … good."
Pause. "She wasn't wrong."
I step back and look at her. She will never be ugly with tears, they are like jewels against her skin. "The way I treat you isn't," I say in a small voice.
"Nor the way I let you," she replies, soberly.
"You deserve better."
"Don't you dare end this," she says, suddenly shrill.
"There is no future –"
"So what if we're all dead by the new year?" She grasps the front of my robes and shakes me. "Will death be any the easier because we're alone?"
"We're always alone when we die," I scorn, pushing her hands from me.
"Don't betray me too," she whispers.
It is a direct hit. She may as well have jammed her wand into each chamber of my heart.
"How can I possibly betray one I do not love," I snarl as if repulsed at her manipulation.
Her hands release me, she does not realise I am concealing uncertainty, so I am safe. Yet even as I walk through the door my regret washes through me like a winter tide. But I don't stop walking, and it is not regret but nausea, and I barely make it to my bathroom in time.
Eventually, I sense the cold of the white porcelain toilet bowl against my hands as I stare down into my vomit, and am comforted by the pain of my stomach as it roils against the truth potion. I must think about what I told Draco. Think! Think! I clean myself up and take a swig of Pepper-up. I glance at the clock as I leave. I have things to do before bed, and a busy day tomorrow. But if I don't see Draco now, there might not be a tomorrow for me.
His room looks empty, but a glance through to his bathroom reveals he is staring into his mirror. He hears me and shifts his gaze in the silvered glass.
"Come in, why don't you," he says, rudely.
I close the door.
"So," he drawls, walking through into the bedroom, "have you beaten in her head with a poker?"
"Not yet."
"Just poked her, then." His face is suddenly hard and furious.
"Spying at keyholes, Draco?" I enquire.
He flushes. I sit down on a small, uncomfortable chair. We look at each other. Draco sits on the edge of his bed. There is a long silence. His father has taught him well, not to try to fill silence with childish chatter. As my father taught me.
At length, he says, "I did what you said."
I raise my brow. "Which was?"
"Took a look in the mirror."
Well, well. I wait. Draco chews on his bottom lip and stares at the floor between us. He eventually says, in a small voice, "How can you do it? Because of Potter's mother? A mudblood? A girl?"
My heart sinks. "Some things are bigger than one's self, Draco. It began because of Lily. She opened a door into a different world, for me." I lean forward. "Your mother has just tried to do the same for you."
His quicksilver eyes flicker over me but he only continues to chew his lip.
"You have the opportunity to be a hero," I say.
"But doesn't that entail standing by my beliefs?" he throws at me, defiant.
I stare. He glares at me, flushed with confidence. I stand. "I hope for your sake you will reconsider," I say as I leave. He does not bother to reply.
I go straight down to my potions room in the cellar. One potion in particular will reach maturity tomorrow. I dig the scrap of paper containing Lily's hair from my pocket and lay it beside a cup on the stone shelf. My wards alert me to Narcissa's presence. She waits in the outer doorway, holding my wand. I go and take it from her. She has changed her clothes for ones not ripped and stained. The lilac dress had looked so pretty on her, too.
I force myself to remember that I am trying to extricate myself from her lover's grasp.
"I'll look after Draco's wand, " I say.
Her gaze is level. "And mine?"
She thinks I am going to murder them both, I can see it in the depths of her eyes. My guts ache with it. I turn and slam my fist into a cupboard door, splintering the cheap veneer and skinning my knuckles.
"Don't betray me," she says again.
When I turn back to her, she is gone.
ooOoo
It is the purest irony that my normally unappealing reflection is a stunning hybrid of two of the three women I have felt affection for in my life. My red hair is Lily, as is my mouth. The rest is Narcissa, and I have borrowed one of her robes for the occasion. The thing about using the hair of a Metamophmagus for a Polyjuice potion is that it is a potentially unstable mixture: one may not be entirely sure what the visual results might be. But I know that Narcissa's natural form is close to the one she lives in most of the time, so I have not used it recklessly.
The morning on the streets of London is warm and dusty. The press of shoppers around me is as uncomfortable as the mourners at the funeral, but I've never been one for crowds. It is unfortunate that I have been forced by convenience to use a hybrid identity that draws people's attention. This body is better to walk in than Umbridge's was, though, and I make my walk quickly to St Mungo's. I give my name as Miss Evans and I am sent up to the fourth floor, to the Janus Thickey ward, home to those with long-term spell damage.
I've been here before, of course, though as myself. And she's in the same bed as she has always been, two places down and on the opposite side to Alice Longbottom. As I walk down the aisle I can see she is out of bed, sitting in the armchair I had specially brought. Her hair has become wispy as it greys, and looks slightly unkempt. She is colouring in a picture of a kitten with a pink crayon.
I want to run.
I force myself up to her bedside and grip the foot rail for support. "Mrs Snape?" I ask, my charmed voice sounding perhaps a little too girlish, a little too Umbridge.
She ignores me. I try again: "Eileen?"
She stops colouring and glances up into my face. She opens her mouth, then hesitates and cocks her head to one side. "You?" The word is thick and spittle flies from her mouth.
"Miss Evans," I say, perching on the edge of the cot. "Rose."
"Here?" She peers at me, suspiciously. This is normal, the mother I know.
"I'm a friend of your son."
She arches a brow and mutters incomprehensibly. The only word I can understand is "He?"
I hope she hasn't heard the gossip, for there will have been gossip, even in this room where many cannot remember their names. I hope that no one has been callous enough to tell her to her face that her son is a murderer. This is not why I have come here.
Why have I come here? Ah, yes: to say goodbye. And not for this poor woman, whose sanity and independence I stole with a curse intended for my father, but for me: selfish to the end.
"He can't come, so I said I would," I say.
We converse, as well as we can with her babble and my habitual reticence. She thinks I am my girlfriend. She is glad I have found a nice girl. She holds my hand and smiles tearfully. Then she falls asleep. A passing medi-witch remarks that this is common. I take the colouring book from her lap and the crayon from her palm and set them neatly on the bedside table.
It comes to me again, the past. My father calling me a freak of nature. My mother crying and begging us to stop fighting. I remember taking aim, the curse on my lips. How her expression froze as she threw herself into my line of fire. How he left the next day and did not ever return.
She has not been coherent since.
My wand vibrates in my pocket and I take a discreet sip from a phial in my handkerchief. My eyes fall onto a huddle across the aisle: Longbottom is visiting his parents. He is completely oblivious to me. He sits beside his mother on the bed. They say nothing to one another. The father sits opposite, staring at the floor. I realise I must go, I am intruding, and they are another family ruined by my actions.
As I walk back down the aisle towards the doors, I think of the Malfoys. Narcissa is so certain that I can save her and her son. She doesn't know that I only have experience of complete and utter destruction of anything loving.
Until today: I remind myself again that our affair is over, she knows what I am by now. She is probably awaiting my return with some hope. But there is none. I know that today we shall all have to make difficult decisions. And live or die by them.
ooOoo
I return to the manor feeling that I have put a little more of what has to be dealt with in order. I cut through the rose gardens and bypass the topiary and watch gathering storm clouds over the roof of the house as I stride: typical English summer. The air is heavy and the first drops splatter around me as I enter the house via the garden room.
I am surprised by Draco, lying on a settee, reading a book. He is more startled; he stares in complete amazement, then looks me up and down, then utters a mewling, sneering sound that he quickly stifles. I am aware of how ridiculous I must look, and choose to ignore his reaction.
"What are you reading?" I ask.
He lifts the book from his lap so I can see the title: 'One hundred murders' by Erin Twitt. "I like the one where he was throttled by his own entrails," he says, quite solemnly.
"Messy and unnecessary," I remark.
"But satisfying," he replies.
"If you had the opportunity to murder me now," I ask, "could you?"
"Would I, you mean?" His eyes glitter in the gloom. "I don't have to, do I? I just have to tell someone who you are."
"That wasn't the question, Draco," I say as I turn towards the door.
"How long are you going to keep us here? You can't lock us up forever."
I cannot answer. I do not know.
I change into my own clothes. I stare at the crumple of Narcissa's robes on my bed and am lost for several moments in the memory of her. I miss her already, more so perhaps because I know she is within reach and yet I cannot touch her. I long for her. It's not right. I cannot afford to feel for her.
I sink onto the bed, touching the edge of her robe. I know that either Draco comes over to my side, or that I must somehow remove him from this situation, indefinitely. She once suggested Draught of Living Death; it would certainly be a better choice than killing them both. But that potion takes a month to prepare. Not knowing what else to do, I make my way down towards my work room. On the way, however, my wand begins to vibrate in my pocket: someone is attempting to break through my wards on the front gates of the manor.
Outside the sky is black and the rain is hurtling down. I deflect the rain from me with a simple spell and run down to the gates. The wind tangles my robes around my legs. I catch a glimpse of a gaggle of house elves chasing the colourful petals that have been blown off the rose bushes and into the air, and wonder if they intend to fix them back on.
As I near the gates I slow to a walk, panting, gravel crunching beneath my step. I can see no one through the wrought iron. The lane beyond looks deserted. I'm not actually expecting to see anyone – intrusions on unplottable and disguised residences are often by complete accident. Perhaps it's Parkinson.
A figure steps into the frame of the gateposts and I stifle a gasp of surprise, but keep my wand low. The wind and rain lash at his pale hair and his prison robes. He peers through the gates right at me, though I know he cannot see me.
My heart thuds in my chest as I raise my wand to draw down the wards I have created. As the gates appear to him, he smiles, and pushes the small side gate open and steps on to his own soil.
"Severus," he says, quite delighted to see me, and throws his arms around me.
"Lucius," I murmur, despondently, into his soaking wet shoulder, "welcome home."
To be continued.
NOTES AND NODS
Thank you EVERYONE for your reviews and support. I read, re-read, and treasure all your reviews and emails.
Praise be to Miranda Macondo for her patient and thorough beta, and for Hraefn for her wondrous Snape and Narcissa artwork for 'Smoke and Mirrors'. Check out the pics at her gallery at http/hraefn. next chapter, alas, will be the last.
Adred x